


Seven Days

by time_transfixed



Category: Town of Salem (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Resurrection, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Witchcraft, sad!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 10:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18193688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/time_transfixed/pseuds/time_transfixed
Summary: It takes the Survivor barely seven days to realize how irrevocably he might have fucked things up.





	Seven Days

\---  
Silence. The ticking clock on the wall read two A.M. A calendar with the date circled in red marked it as early Sunday morning. Outside, the sound of a car passing by under the window interrupted the stillness of the night. There was a quiet voice filtering through telephone static as the Survivor held it to his ear. 

“Hey,” on the other side of the line the Retributionist sounded breathless, excited. “I have all the materials ready, and it seems like a pretty auspicious time to start. I’ll be in the cemetery. Come when you’re ready.” 

\---  
There were a thousand things left unsaid between the two of them, all the little things that hadn’t seemed to matter back when they were both alive and happy and living day in and day out with nothing but the belief that there would always be a _tomorrow_. 

Tomorrow, they would fill in those silences with something more to talk about. 

Tomorrow, William would tell Darwin about the indescribable exhilaration of being around him.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Because they had their whole lives ahead of them right? 

Time had changed them both though. William felt the usual greeting stick in his throat, unable to get out. It didn’t feel right for the occasion. 

It was like he was no longer Billy; the name didn’t seem to apply to him anymore. Billy belonged to some other, happier stranger who didn’t think about the mundane, who laughed and worried and _lived_ , really lived, outside of the ghostly pale half-lit dream-waking world of William. 

Standing in the middle of a jagged circle of salt, in faded red and black, was the Transporter in all of his former glory, and William found all the words that he had screamed out to cold gravestone wouldn’t be able to express even a fraction of what was thumping in his chest right then. 

“Hey.” In the end, that would suffice. In the corner of his eye, Verity rolled her shoulders and gave him a quick glance. 

“I’ll leave you two to it then,” she said, before she gathered the half-melted candles and headed out of the graveyard. 

“I--er. How have you been?” William had never been the best at carrying conversation, had never known what to say when it really mattered. “It’s well. It’s been almost a year.” 

Darwin stared at him for a moment, before glancing down at his hands, much paler than they normally were and shaking from some persistent chill of death. He held his right hand out. A handshake, William realized. 

“Welcome back,” he said, grasping the other’s proffered hand. It was cold to the touch and didn’t feel anything like warm, human flesh, but he shook it vigorously all the same. 

It felt like something definitive, binding. It felt like starting anew. 

The way back was drenched in the same awkward silence that would normally make his skin crawl. He’d taken his bike through the city to meet Verity in the graveyard, but with the two of them they had to make the trek on foot. 

For the first time William realized how oppressive the silence around them was. They had never been like this--before--well, there had always been _something_ , something that the Transporter filled the quietness between them with, some new joke or a strange bit of wisdom that somehow made sense despite the absurdity. 

There had always been something to talk about, the tooth dangling from Darwin’s ear or the latest exploit the two had gone on, or the best ways to cheat--win at board games. The distance between them now, a scant feet, stretched on for miles. 

William found himself rambling to fill the unnatural emptiness of the night. “I--well I managed to save most of your belongings after you--went away. Marianne managed to pull some strings and keep your taxi from being towed, so there’s that too. I know how much you loved-- _love_ the damned thing.”

Darwin nodded slowly. A painful almost-smile stretched across his face, half-lit by the street-lamp above them. 

“I--uhh--I’m pretty sure your landlady rented out your apartment to someone else pretty soon after you were gone,” he continued. “But--I have a spare room that you can sleep in while you’re still recovering, and I’m sure you can get re-hired by the post office in the meantime. Just. To sleep off the effects of well--you know what I mean”

If the Transporter did know what he meant, he didn’t say anything. They made the journey back in peace, and by the end of it William was beginning to feel the effects of waking up at two in the morning to go careening across town. 

The lingering high of being able to see Darwin again still persisted though, and even if events hadn’t gone exactly how he’d imagined them to, and sure the Transporter hadn’t said a word, surely he would feel better once he adjusted to the living world again. 

But he closed the door to his room and collapsed against it and _laughed_ because everything was going to be okay; he had full faith in that. Everything could go back to what it once was. 

Because if anyone could come back from death itself even, it was _him_ , the fucking Transporter who feared no God at all, who weaseled and bullshitted his way out of everything successfully, who probably treated the prospect of death the same way he treated everything--hurtling straight into it with his strange logic and obliviousness. 

Everything was going to be okay. 

\---

It wasn’t. 

\---  
Monday morning found the sun climbing lazily through the sky, William’s windows slightly ajar to let out the dusty masque of death that had creeped in from yesterday’s trek to the graveyard. 

“You okay?” 

Darwin looked up from where he was contemplating one of his old brightly colored jackets. The Survivor shuffled uncomfortably in the doorway, once again unsure of how best to deal with the situation. 

“It was--well is--your favorite color. Well. At least it was the color you wore the most, and I remember you tried repainting your taxi that color before I told you it was a bad idea. Fuck, and there was this one time--you had these godawful--I don’t even know if they could be called shoes.” William abruptly realized that he was rambling again and cut himself off. It surprised even him how many damn little details he remembered of the Transporter--all the little details about the man that were missing now, in this empty husk. 

Darwin gave a sharp jerk of his head to show that he had heard him, before he slowly slipped the jacket back on the hangar and slid it back into the closet. 

“Maybe not then?” he suggested weakly. “How do you feel?” At this point, he felt hollow, an empty, broken record on repeat trying and failing each time to get a different answer. 

Another shrug. 

“Alright then,” William sighed. “I’ll ask again tomorrow.” 

\---  
He slept half of Tuesday away, in a constant state of tossing and turning, occasionally waking up with a headache before burying his head under his pillow again. 

William found Darwin hunched over his old taxi, wiping away at the thin layer of dust with a familiar single-minded energy that made him smile. 

“I--well I cleaned it out for you while you were gone,” he said. “Nothing you would’ve--would care about got thrown out of course, but I just didn’t want anything bad growing in there.”

With careful, almost mechanical movements, Darwin took the keys from his outstretched hand and opened the car doors, sliding into the front seat gingerly. The front window was fogged slightly over, with a new splat of an unidentifiable bug that hadn’t been there before. The Transporter gave a quiet hum, and the Survivor relaxed slightly. 

Then Darwin’s fingers paused over tracing faded red spots splotched over cracked leather and he froze. 

The Survivor sucked in a breath. “I couldn’t get the bloodstains out. When I thought you were--coming back, I tried my hardest but it’d been too long. I’ll get Marianne to fix it actually; she’d probably know something about how to get it out.” 

Darwin leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. Neither of them said a word after that.

\---  
Early Wednesday, when the sun had barely risen and it was much too early, Marianne knocked on the door with a characteristic droll expression on her face. 

“Your house has miraculously become cleaner since last time I came to visit,” she said, sitting down without any prompting. “I hadn’t thought it possible.”

“Oh shut up, like you’re one to talk,” he fired back, “you have mold growing on the outside of your windows.”

“That’s for convenience,” she sniffed. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the complex nature of potion ingredients.”

“Wow, barely nine and you’re already pulling out the elitist bullshit.”

“Hardly bullshit.” A pause. “Is he alright?” 

Neither of them needed to specify who _he_ was.

William hesitated, briefly considering telling Marianne that it was really none of her business before stopping. In the almost year between when the Transporter’s corpse had been identified washed up in a riverbed and now she had seen more of his most vulnerable moments than he cared to admit. 

“He--he seems fine.” The words sounded pathetically uncertain even to his own ears. “He hasn’t said a word since he got back, hasn’t really done anything that even feels like him. I just--” 

Marianne nodded sympathetically. She didn’t say anything else. Comfort had never been her forte. 

\---  
Thursday found him sitting with Verity on the front step of her store, the hubbub of what few regular customers she had having died out in the humidity of the afternoon. William stared forlornly at the price tag on a particularly gaudy beaded bracelet that promised to ward off spirits and bit down the thought of the _irony_. 

“He’s not alright. He barely eats, hasn't said anything; all he does is sit there and who knows what’s going on that head of his! I don’t know what to do; I don’t know how to help him, and I thought you could--”

Verity hesitated before replying, and William had the sinking feeling that she didn’t know what was going on either. “Maybe-maybe you just didn’t know him that well. He spent a good while dead; I doubt people come back from that kind of experience unchanged.” The Retributionist let out a sigh. “I’ve never done this before, you know. I didn’t even think it was possible--the others told me it was impossible, certainly.”

The Survivor washed down his own disappointment. “Do you think he’ll get better?” 

“Yeah,” his companion offered him a tentative smile as she wrapped her arms around herself. “He just needs to get used to the world of the living again. You’ll see. Things will work out in the end.”

William didn’t have the heart to tell Verity how badly things had spiraled out of both of their original estimations. 

He cursed himself for being so fucking _stupid_. Stupid, for thinking even magic could fix the whole damned mess he’d gotten himself into. 

That was the heart of it. He was too fucking stupid; it was like Marianne had told him; he should’ve been smart enough to accept the way things were and move the fuck _on_. 

He wanted to let himself believe Verity, that time would make things better and all he had to do was persist and be patient. That was how it happened in fucking fairy tales that awarded the protagonist for being diligent and not losing faith. It wasn’t how it happened in real life. 

William thought he’d learned that already. Apparently not. 

\---  
Late Friday night as the tinny sound of jazz played on a phonograph crawled in through the windows, William slumped over the table in defeat. 

“Why,” he nearly cried out, uncaring of the frustration that leaked into his voice, “why did you have to make me _care_ , actually care about someone if you were just going to go die like this? God damn it, _why_?” 

“Sorry,” the Transporter breathed out, barely a whisper. His voice was hoarse and cracked in all the wrong places, but it was the first thing William had heard him say in a long time, and that seemed to make everything worse. 

“No, you’re not sorry. God, you’re not even fully in there are you?” Laughter unexpectedly bubbled up in his chest, short and harsh barking that quickly turned to coughing. “ _He_ never apologized outright for all the crazy shit he pulled. It was the best part of him; he wasn’t afraid of their scorn.” 

“You know,” he continued, “I didn’t fucking need you. I was doing perfectly _fine_ and then you had to barge into my life and I _love you_ you fucking idiot somehow, against all odds, just wake the fuck up and _listen_ please. Just give some indication that you can hear me.” By the end of it his entire body was shaking; his hands had grown numb without his permission and all he wanted to do was go to bed and forget all of this. 

The Transporter’s lips were silently forming words and suddenly William felt so ashamed of himself. “I’m so sorry; none of this was your fault; I’m so fucking _sorry_. Here, I’ll get you some water, your voice sounds awful. But--it’s so good to hear you speak again.” 

Water, water. He scrambled behind the counter for a glass, some irrational (or perhaps rational) part of him fearing that Darwin’s ability to speak would evaporate just as quickly as it had come. 

“It hurts a lot sometimes.” Darwin said, staring blankly at the glass of water he had been handed. 

“Where does it hurt?” William asked frantically, “should I call the Doctor?” 

The resurrected man sighed. “Here.” And William realized with dawning horror and realization that he was pointing at his chest, the place where the bullet had gone through. Logically there was no wound there, hell, there wasn’t even a fucking scar, just eerily smooth flesh; Verity had promised that the constraints of the ritual meant that the resurrected body was in perfect health surely she couldn’t be _wrong_ \--

“Are you sure it’s there?” 

“Where else would it be?” The Transporter cocked his head, and not for the first time the Survivor realized that he had made a terrible, terrible mistake. 

\---  
Saturday morning found him buried under the covers trying to sleep his woes away. His strategies for coping had never exactly been the most foolproof. 

“There’s too much water around us,” Darwin said, right in his ear. “It’s going to drown you Billy, it’s going to drown us all. It’s so cold.”

He couldn’t sleep anymore. 

\---  
It was his own damn fault for being so fucking stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> as you can see, the survivor is VERY good at communicating effectively 
> 
> thanks for reading :^))


End file.
